Georgie turned to her, taking sudden courage.

“Lisbeth,” she said, “you never told me much about your acquaintance with Hector Anstruthers. I wonder how it was. You knew him very well, it seems.”

“I wish,” broke out Lisbeth, almost angrily, “that I had never known him at all.”

The faithful heart, beating in the breast of the girl at her side, leaped nervously.

“It was Lisbeth,” said she to herself. “It was Lisbeth.”

“I wish,” repeated Lisbeth, frowning at the sea, “that I had never seen him.”

“Why?” was Georgie’s quiet question.

“Because—because it was a bad thing for us both,” in greater impatience than ever.

Georgie looked up at her sadly.

“Why, again?” she ventured, in her soft voice. She could not help it.

But for a moment Lisbeth did not answer. 105 She had risen, and stood leaning against the rock, a queer look on her face, a queer darkening in her eyes. At length she broke into a little, hard laugh, as if she meant to defy herself to be emotional.

“How horror-stricken you would be, if I were to tell you why,” she said.

“Does that mean,” Georgie put it to her “that you were unkind to him?”

“It means,” was her strange reply—“it means that it was I who ruined his life forever.”

She made the confession fairly, in spite of herself. And she was emotional—vehement. She could not stand this innocent Georgie, and her beliefs any longer. She had been slowly approaching this mood for months, and now every inner and outer influence seemed to combine against her natural stubborn secretiveness. Perhaps Pen’yllan, the sea, the shore, the sky, helped her on to the end. At any rate, she must tell the truth this once, and hear what this innocent Georgie would say to it.

“I ruined his life for him,” she repeated. “I broke his faith. I believe I am to blame for every evil change the last few years have wrought in him. I, myself—Lisbeth. Do you hear, Georgie?” 106

The face under Georgie’s straw hat was rather pale, but it was not horror-stricken.

“You were too young,” she faltered, “to understand.”

“Too young?” echoed Lisbeth. “I never was young in my life. I was born old. I was born a woman, and I was born cold and hard. That was it. If I had been like other girls, he would have touched my heart, after he had touched my vanity, or he might even have touched my heart first. You would have loved him with all your soul. Are you willing to hear the whole history, Georgie?”

“Quite willing. Only,” and she raised her face with a bright, resolute, affectionate look, “you cannot make me think harshly of you. So, don’t try, Lisbeth.”

Lisbeth regarded her with an entirely new expression, which had, nevertheless, a shade of her old wonder in it.

“I really do not believe I could,” she said. “You are very hard to deal with; at least I find it hard to deal with you. You are a new experience. If there was just a little flavor of insincerity or uncharitableness in you, if you would be false to your beliefs now and then, I should know what to do; but, as it is, you 107 are perplexing. Notwithstanding, here comes the story.”

She put her hands behind her, and bracing herself against the rock, told it from beginning to end, in her coolest, most daring way, even with a half-defiant air. If she had been telling some one else’s story, she could not have been more caustic and unsparing, more determined to soften no harsh outline, or smooth over anything. She set the girl Lisbeth before her listener, just as Lisbeth Crespigny at seventeen had been. Selfish, callous, shallow, and deep, at once: restless, ungrateful, a half-ripe coquette, who, notwithstanding her crudeness, was yet far too ripe for her age. She pictured the honest, boyish young fellow, who had fallen victim to her immature fascinations, simply because he was too guileless and romantic to see in any woman anything but a goddess. She described his sincerity, his unselfish willingness to bear her caprices, and see no wrong in them; his lavish affection for every thing and every one who shared his love for her; his readiness to believe, his tardiness to doubt and see her as she really was; the open-hearted faith which had made the awakening so much harder to bear, when it forced itself upon him at last. She left out the recital of no petty wrong she 108 had done him, and no small tyranny or indignity she had made him feel. She told the whole story, in fact, as she saw it now; not as she had seen it in that shallow, self-ruled girlhood; and when she had touched upon everything, and ended with that last scene in the garden, among Aunt Clarissa’s roses, she stopped.

And there was a silence.

Georgie’s eyelashes were wet, and so were her cheeks. A tear or so stained her pink cravat. It was so sorrowful. Poor Hector again! And then, of course, poor Lisbeth! By her own showing, Lisbeth deserved no pity; but the warm young heart gave her pity enough, and to spare. Something had been wrong somewhere. Indeed, it seemed as if everything had been wrong, but—Poor Lisbeth! She was so fond of Lisbeth herself, ............